Daily Lesson for May 7, 2020

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Psalm 50 verses

7 “Hear, O my people, and I will speak,

    O Israel, I will testify against you.

    I am God, your God.

8 Not for your sacrifices do I rebuke you;

    your burnt offerings are continually before me.

9 I will not accept a bull from your house,

    or goats from your folds.

10 For every wild animal of the forest is mine,

    the cattle on a thousand hills.

11 I know all the birds of the air,

    and all that moves in the field is mine.

12 “If I were hungry, I would not tell you,

    for the world and all that is in it is mine.

13 Do I eat the flesh of bulls,

    or drink the blood of goats?

14 Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving,

    and pay your vows to the Most High.

15 Call on me in the day of trouble;

    I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.”

16 But to the wicked God says:

    “What right have you to recite my statutes,

    or take my covenant on your lips?

17 For you hate discipline,

    and you cast my words behind you.

18 You make friends with a thief when you see one,

    and you keep company with adulterers.

19 “You give your mouth free rein for evil,

    and your tongue frames deceit.

20 You sit and speak against your kin;

    you slander your own mother’s child.

21 These things you have done and I have been silent;

    you thought that I was one just like yourself.

But now I rebuke you, and lay the charge before you.

22 “Mark this, then, you who forget God,

    or I will tear you apart, and there will be no one to deliver.

23 Those who bring thanksgiving as their sacrifice honor me;

    to those who go the right way

    I will show the salvation of God.”

Today is the National Day of Prayer, a day set aside to observe prayer for our communities, Nation, and world.

Yet the psalmist reminds us this morning that prayer and offerings to God are not things to be fooled with. Empty gestures and hollow prayers do not impress God so long as the people offering them are wicked thieves with malice in their mouths towards their kinfolk and without care for what belongs to their neighbors.

"Call on me in the day of trouble;

    I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.”

But to the wicked God says:

    “What right have you to recite my statutes,

    or take my covenant on your lips?"

These are the days of trouble, and this morning's Lesson is a call to prayer. But it is also a call to purity -- to integrity and wholeness.

Purify our prayers, O Lord.  But even more so purify our hearts and the heart of this Nation and make it whole.